Friday, October 17, 2014

Our Grand
Canyon rafting guides didn’t call it “The Death March” for nothing. The hike from
the Colorado River up the cliffs to see some modest waterfalls high in a narrow
side canyon wasn’t that far – maybe a mile. Nor were the steep trail or rocky
switchbacks impossibly strenuous or particularly risky.

It’s just
that near the top of the hike, death was as close as one slip. The trail was
unforgiving, especially a short stretch where you had to duck your head under
an overhanging ledge while navigating a narrow slice of rock and gravel that
sloped off to a sheer drop.

Context
makes a difference. You might not give a second thought to scrambling along
such a trail on a little hill next to a parking lot at the mall. You
slip there – you get grass stains or gravel in a knee. Not The Death March. You
slip there – you die.

I had no
doubt that some really had died right there after our guide, Ann-Marie, told us
a story from the Paiutes, who called the Grand Canyon home a thousand years ago. She
showed us a spot where the vertical walls of the deep slot canyon come close together
in rock nubs projecting from each side that are large enough to stand on,
although both slant into the abyss. You might even imagine that you could jump
across from one side to the other – if you had a running start on flat ground,
you were a trained broad jumper, and you didn’t know it was certain death if
you missed.

Jumping,
however, is apparently just what the Paiutes did – probably young men out to
prove their mettle, like all teenagers of all time, I suppose. I imagined
that’s who left the red hand prints burnished into the walls there, Paiute boys
leaving their mark like a Facebook selfie.

Paiute selfies.

If Tyler had
been born a Paiute, he probably would have tried the jump. The youngest at 16
in our rafting group, Tyler insisted on climbing everything in sight, to the
heartburn of his accompanying grandparents who accused me with some
justification of encouraging his risky behavior.

Eva had concluded, “When I saw
Tyler stop in mid-sentence to try and catch a passing butterfly, I realized
he’s just like a puppy.” And on the last night when we heard
a voice from the booze table loudly demand of the darkness: “Who drank all my
vodka?” the image of a drunken puppy immediately came to mind. Boys will be boys.

However, you have to
wonder if that Paiute jumping story is true. There was this one
crazy white boy who actually took the leap, according to
Ann-Marie. His name was Kenton and he worked on the river and one day he got up his nerve and just
did it. Kenton jumped and landed on the other side but was
losing his forward momentum with gravity pulling him backwards toward death. That’s when he “felt a force” pulling his body
back to the rock. So the story goes.

Everyone on
our hike made it safely up to the waterfall, although one burly fellow needed several minutes to compose himself before crossing
the worst spot. Hoping to ease any embarrassment he felt, I loudly branded it “the
most scary-ass trail” I’d ever hiked and meant it.

Later in camp
I asked fellow-hiker Bernard, a well-seasoned traveler, how he would rate The
Death March on his personal scary scale. Bernard, known to most of the other
rafters as simply an aging, Mexican restaurant owner from southern California,
had shared with me his secret. He was a professional race car driver, having competed
several times in the Indianapolis 500. As famous in Mexico, he conceded to me, as A.J.
Foyt, whom he once had raced for. When racing as a rookie in practice for the Indy 500, Bernard
had ricocheted his car off three walls and demolished it, as well as his
spleen. Bernard knew scary.

“So,
Bernard. The trail?” I said.

“Not number
one,” he insisted.

“Then what?”
I persisted.

“For me,” he
paused, thinking hard, “number two.”

Rachel & Bernard

For
overcoming our fears on that scary-ass trail, our reward had been plunging into
a waist-deep grotto fed by a head-high, crystal clear waterfall flowing down
from a sun-lit oasis lush with greenery and cottonwood trees.

Descending, I lagged to chat with Ann-Marie, who was bringing up the rear. “The
most scary-ass trail in the world to see the world’s most beautiful landscape –
at least in my world. Not a bad afternoon,” I told her.

As we
dropped back down the rocky cliffside I added, “Still, I can’t believe you take
people here. I mean, it’s a great experience, but I can’t believe the risk.”

She reminded
me that anyone can stay with the raft; take a shorter, completely safe hike, as
most had chosen to do; or turn back at any point, as none had chosen to do. “It’s
great when people push themselves,” she said. “We don’t want to discourage
people from doing what they don’t know they’re capable of.”

“Well, you
can never go wrong making people feel good about themselves,” I concluded.

We came to a
fork in the trail where an abandoned and steeper portion of the old trail
dropped back to the river. The two of us scrambled alone down that little-used
route, sharing the silence, sliding over boulders, and dodging poky desert plants.
Thank you very much, Ann-Marie, for at that moment I felt very good about
myself, indeed.